


Things Left Behind

by afewreelthoughts



Series: Ours is the Angst [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 03:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10800336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: Stannis is shown to Renly's rooms after taking Storm's End, and chooses to sort through his brother's worldly possessions.





	Things Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything or make any money from any of it. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

The lord's chambers in Storm's End looked out over the castle and the wild seas below.  Standing before their wide windows, Stannis looked out over the waves and listened to the crackle from the fireplace.  

After Cortnay Penrose’s death, the soldiers opened the gates for Stannis and his men without complaint. The people of Storm’s End were deep in mourning for both their lost young lord and their castellan, and they seemed to think that Stannis would avenge them. They had prepared the lord’s chambers for him, and Stannis saw no reason to refuse. These rooms used to be his, after all.  But as soon as he had set foot inside, he felt the heavy walls closing in around him.  He did not belong here.  These rooms were still every inch his brother's.  He had thanked the servant who had shown him inside and tried to calm his breathing by refusing to look at anything that reminded him of Renly.  The soothing sound of wild waves took him back years and years, as if Mace Tyrell's siege had only just ended, and the future spread out before him like an open road.

Next to where Stannis stood was a heavy, wooden desk, where Renly had presumably done what little work he concerned himself with.  Someone would have to sort through his brother's effects at some point.  Perhaps it would be easy to start here.

The papers on Renly’s desk lay in neat stacks. Stannis picked up one, a collection of letters petitioning for money, stacked in order of the date they were received, all with notes written at the bottom in his brother’s neat hand, about how much money each petitioner had received, if any.

Stannis could not help but note his brother’s fastidiousness, something he had tried to impart to Renly as a young boy.  He had not known Renly had been listening.

At the corner of the desk stood four books, most likely the entirety of Renly’s library. Stannis recognized the history of Jaehaerys I that he had given Renly on his eighteenth name day. The gift had been a challenge, presenting his superficial brother with a scholarly work, knowing how much Renly disdained serious reading. He thought he saw a bent page at the beginning of the book. His little brother rarely read, but when he did, he left his books mangled, folding down the corners, leaving them at angles that bent their spines, writing notes in their margins.  His fastidiousness clearly did not extend to his reading material.  Suddenly the knowledge of whether Renly had ever read his gift was too much.  Stannis picked up a different book. It was a geography of Westeros and Essos, written in a large script.  He remembered the book from their childhood together.  Renly had kept it all this time.  Stannis rubbed a finger over a smudged fingerprint left behind a decade ago.  The next book was _The Loves of Queen Nymeria_ , pages bent and crumpled.  The next,  _Kin of the Stag_.

Stannis left the books behind.  He crossed to the large bed that dominated the room and knelt before a carved wooden chest at its foot.  The chest was unlocked. Stannis carefully lifted up the green velvet doublet folded so neatly at the top.  Golden embroidery made it heavy in Stannis's hands.  He laid it out on the bed and drew out the next item, a fine silk tunic, dyed a deep gold.  Renly had started wearing Tyrell colors two or three years ago.  No one had seemed to notice – only noting that the colors suited him and assuming it a vain choice.  Stannis had not corrected them.

He leafed through layers and layers of fabric.  Silk and wool and linen and velvet brushed against his hands.

What was he going to do with all this?  Even if Renly’s clothes fit someone else, whom would they be appropriate for?  He felt sick.  The wealth of his brother’s time and joy, and it was all useless now.

His hand knocked against something hard and heavy at the bottom of the chest. 

When he drew the item out from where it was nestled beneath smallclothes and wrapped in a length of silk, he saw it was indeed another book, this one with no title.  The patterns on the leather cover looked vaguely Dornish.  Stannis’s first thought was that if Renly took such pains to hide this book, he must not want anyone reading it.  His second thought was that Renly was dead.  Stannis riffled through the pages, not fully seeing the illustrations or reading the words clearly.  He let it fall open, and immediately slammed it shut.  His eyes were so wide he felt they would pop out of his head.

“You must think this is funny,” he said to the empty room, as if his brother’s shade would answer.  

His face cracked into a smile. “You always have the last word.”

He laughed.  He could not help it.  It was hilarious.  Renly would have loved that, even in death, he could manage to shock anyone looking through his private things.  Stannis sank further to the floor, holding a book full of the most lascivious pictures he had ever seen and laughing helplessly.  

He laughed and laughed until his breaths came short and fast, and he was gasping, his cheeks wet with tears.  He clutched at the book as though it was driftwood in a storm.  When he thought he heard Renly's laughter in the space between his tears, he threw the book onto the fire. The flames licked at its pages like orange silk, consuming all its pleasure and vice. He ran to the desk and added the other books to the fire, one after the other, the history of Jaehaerys I last, the flames building higher and higher.

He grabbed the doublet he had so carefully laid out on Renly's bed and drew his dagger. He sliced the garment open from collar to navel, reveling in the unraveling golden thread. He cut a pair of velvet trousers in half, then into quarters.  He cut a small hole in a silk tunic and tore it to pieces with his hands.

The pyre grew.  

Black smoke rolled into the room, and Stannis coughed.  His knees ached and his eyes burned.  

He slashed a pair of fine black boots next to the fire.  He tore at the cloak hanging above them on the wall until the beads embroidered into it ran through his hands like sand.  

“Your Grace?”

Stannis looked up from where he knelt before the growing fire, scraps of his brother’s clothing still clutched in his hands.  How long Davos had been standing in the doorway, he did not want to know.

Stannis stood.  “I will not stay here tonight. Have the servants prepare another room.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

He waved at the room. “Have someone deal with all of this.  Clear it out.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“Do you want it burned?"

“Burn it. Give it away. Throw it into the sea.  What do I care?”

Davos regarded him silently for a long moment.  

“It is right to miss those you have lost, Your Grace.”

Stannis thought he heard disapproval in Davos's tone.  Shame.  Disappointment.  Stannis would have had another man punished for his insolence.

“I do not miss him,” Stannis simply said. “Storm’s End is mine, and I will not be haunted by my brother’s ghost.”

**Author's Note:**

> Me, before writing this: Wouldn’t it be funny if Stannis found Renly’s porn?
> 
> Me, after writing this: ... No.


End file.
